In a split second

A police officer in NY had to decide within a split second whether he should shoot an armed man holding a young woman hostage. At first the perp had the gun to her head and was saying he was going to kill her.  Then he raised the gun and pointed it at the officer.  According to reports there was very little time to talk and de-escalate and this kind of thing is the toughest call any law enforcement officer has to make.  Eight rounds were fired.  Seven hit the perp and one hit the girl.  My heart aches for this young lady’s family and for the officer.  The officer is on sick leave and I’m sure he is probably suffering the immense psychological pain that comes with this kind of incident.  He will have to carry the burden of this unintentional victim for the rest of his days.  This is one of the many reasons why more police officers die by committing suicide than are killed by felons every year.  We ask these men and women to carry an incredibly heavy responsibility and burden when we ask them to carry deadly weapons in their community’s defense.

This officer had served 8 years in the New York Police Department and 12 years in Nassau County (basically this is Long Island and much more suburban than the various NYC Burroughs) .  7 out of 8 bullets hit their target—that’s an accuracy level far, far above the average police officer’s accuracy in these kinds of situations where, if they’re really, really good, only about 50% of the bullets fired will actually strike the target.  Some studies show average hit rates as low as 20% at a distance of 7 feet.  Do YOU like those odds, if it was you or a loved one being held hostage?   This low hit percentage is precisely why the policy for such situations is to “talk and de-escalate”.  Talking and not automatically firing reduces the odds that anyone will be killed or injured.  Thousands upon thousands of stand-offs get resolved peacefully without any shots fired.  We only hear about the ones where it doesn’t work, but the reality is that it usually works.  I’m NOT saying the officer in this situation did the wrong thing or that he was a bad shot.  Far from it.  He did a damn good job to hit the guy as much as he did!  And I would never question his judgement call.  I wasn’t there.  His department will take care of that investigation ¹.

The point is that this news story, and the thousands just like it over many decades, demonstrate that even with good training and experience, the innocent still can and do get hurt.  The average gun toting American has never taken a single shooting course.  They may go to the range and they may do a lot of hunting, but at no point do the paper targets or the deer shoot back or threaten the lives of others.  The average American hasn’t had extensive and repetitive crisis response training.  They don’t get periodically certified based on their consistency and accuracy with a particular weapon.  Nor have they had all the other LEO training that teaches an officer on how to handle violent and potentially violent situations both with and without a weapon–so they have fewer tools with which to handle a crisis situation and are more likely to draw than a trained officer would be.  They won’t have had the first aid training of a LEO.  They simply will not have the same skillset as a LEO would have to make such a judgement call.  The average American watches Tombstone and plays Call of Duty on an Xbox and they think they’re ready to protect their fellow citizens ².   So to all the wannabe gun toting heroes running around who think IF they had been there they would have taken out the perp John Wayne-style and all the innocent people would have been saved–I call BS, yet again.

On a related note, yesterday we lost not one but two City of Phoenix public servants in the line of duty–a police officer and a firefighter.    They were both very young and both killed by motor vehicles.  The firefighter was crushed between two emergency vehicles–that’s right, crushed by trained emergency vehicle drivers.  The officer was performing a DUI stop on a surface road when he was struck by a passing vehicle, an incredibly sad but common occurrence in the U.S.  If you wish to offer your condolences and/or donate to help their families (BTW, they make diddly squat in pay compared to what they could have made in private industry) here is a link.

Motor vehicles are deadly weapons even when they are operated correctly.  You can drive absolutely perfectly and still get hit and killed by a bad driver.  But let’s face it we need cars to get around ³ and the car culture isn’t going away any time soon ⁴. But we also recognize that they’re dangerous necessities and as a result we require licensing, insurance and some kind of skills test to get or renew that license.  Yet we don’t have such a thing for guns.

Many will counter that guns are a right and driving is a privilege.  Unfortunately for them, that argument doesn’t fly.  Guns are a right but they are a dangerous right.  We should control them for the sake of safety like we control not only privileges like driving but also other rights such as Free Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of the Press, Property Ownership, etc.  None of these other rights and privileges are absolute.  You can legally own land but you can’t do anything you want to it.  You can’t by a lot in Suburbia and then decide to put a mini-landfill on it.  You can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater.  You can’t ⁵ advocate for a particular candidate from the pulpit and keep your non-taxable status.  You can’t ⁶ reveal the identities of the U.S. undercover agents in the Press and not get prosecuted for it.   There are limits to all of them.  The 2nd Amendment is the ONLY right that conservatives insist should be absolutely unregulated in spite of the fact that the law itself demands that it be “well regulated”.  Yet, we do regulate every other deadly thing in our society.

Gun control isn’t unconstitutional.  Endangering your fellow citizens should be.  Let’s put some common sense controls in place.

Notes:

1. Every police department in the country requires an investigation when shots are fired by an officer regardless of whether there are any actual shooting victims or not.   In fact in some departments if an officer even unholsters their  weapon, they are REQUIRED to submit a “user of force” report.  In other departments, the report is only required if the weapon is drawn and pointed at a target.  These policies differ depending on location.  In somewhere like LA, they have to draw their weapon all the time and submitting a UOF report for every time would grind the department to a halt.  But in suburban areas, drawing a weapon is the exception, not the rule.  Regardless, if the officer uses force, he is then expected to prove that the use of force was required in that situation.  In the case of a shooting, the officer must prove that use of deadly force was necessary regardless of whether someone died or not.  They don’t just take the officer’s word for it either.  They interview the officer, their partner, both visual and auditory witnesses, the perp and any victims.  They look at the medical records.  They look at security camera and dash mounted cameras.  They retrieve the shell casings and if possible the bullets. They take the weapon and put it under lock and key.  They put the officer on admin leave during the investigation. They fire the weapon in question and compare it to the bullets recovered.  It’s a full investigation except the officer isn’t presumed innocent.  The fact that he fired a shot is known.  The only thing in question is “was it justified”?  For the most part this system works.  It’s rare that a dirty or incompetent cop lasts very long.  When dirty cops are found, the corruption usually extends up into the higher ranking officers so that such investigatory efforts are thwarted.  In those cases, the media and other local government agencies notice a pattern and step in to root out the corruption.  In spite of what Hollywood likes to tell you, systemic corruption such as the LAPD Rampart Scandal are the exception, not the rule.

2. Some will say ‘then maybe Americans should get this training’.  Really?  You want everyone in the U.S. to be trained to the level of police officers?   Because that is what it would take and we would STILL suffer these unintentional deaths.  Last time I checked we didn’t live in a failed, third world state.  This isn’t Somalia where everyone is a potential threat all the time.  This is supposed to be the Land of the Free and it can hardly be that if we all have to run around armed to the teeth and “en guarde” every moment like a LEO has to be. Never mind the fact that the majority of people in the U.S. wouldn’t make successfully through LEO training because they aren’t physically and mentally capable of completing said training. And before you say I’m being a snob, I include myself in this category. I went through LEO training in my 20′s. At 43, I’m not entirely sure I could do it again.

3. Lord knows we don’t have decent public transportation options in this state.

4. The oil and gas industry giants are making damn sure of that

5. At least, we’re not supposed to do it. Although I’ve heard stories of many, many Christian preachers encouraging people to vote for the white guy in the last election.  This mixing of religion and politics make us no better than the religious zealots who control Iran or used to run the Taliban.  We’re supposed to be better than that.  America is not supposed to be a Theocracy. Thomas Jefferson probably rolls in his grave every time a preacher gets political in church.

6. Again, we’re not supposed to do it and if we do we should be punished for it. Except for Dick Cheney and company, of course. He outed Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent through his adviser, Scooter Libby, to a New York Times reporter because Plame’s husband had the temerity to report in the Press that Iraq did not have WMD’s in the run up to the Iraqi Invasion. Cheney wanted that damn war so bad he could taste it. After all, Halliburton, a company with whom Cheney’s financial fortune was entangled, was expected to make tens of millions of dollars out of the conflict.  Libby was eventually convicted of lying and obstructing a grand jury investigation into the Plame affair.  He was protecting Dick, of course.  Libby was given a commutation by President Bush, conveniently.  There were no consequences for Darth Cheney, however. Had it been you or I that outed a CIA agency, we would have served hard time in a federal prison.

Penny wise, pound foolish

Our cash strapped schools are spending more money but not on books or improving facilities or paying teachers properly. No they are spending it on security because after the Newton shooting parents and administrators are worried.  Security companies and the gun industry, always happy to increase their profit margin, are thrilled.

Unfortunately, this is like putting a band-aid on arterial bleeding.  It will only stem the flow for a millisecond before the deluge continues and the patients dies.  So instead of dealing with the REAL societal, albeit difficult, issues of improving our mental health services, improving gun safety through rational and effective regulation, and targeted training programs we are just going to give a ton of money to the band-aid of more supposed “security” and more guns.

No wonder this country is in trouble.  We can only focus on any issue for about five minutes and we are a chicken shits when it comes to dealing with difficult societal issues.  We only make necessary changes when forced (e.g., Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation, Civil Rights movement, Suffragette Movement, etc, etc, etc).

Things that make you go, hmmmmm

• Ever since 2010 the U.S. deficit has been decreasing BUT 90% of Americans think it is going up.
• The GOP is trying to fix elections under the guise of wanting to voting reform. Several different states (for example, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia) have the state GOP pushing to divide state electoral votes according to congressional districts. Why? Because of gerrymandering, the current layout of congressional districts favors Republicans–i.e., rural districts with low populations would have an equal say with urban districts with high populations. If those proposals are passed into law, then it will be that much more difficult to elect a Democratic President in the future. What’s missing from the proposals? Actual voting reform.
• The NRA is against background checks because they will lead to gun confiscation. Yep, they don’t care if child molesters or bank robbers or crazy people buy a gun. That’s brilliant!
• Ashley Judd, of the famous Judd family, is acting like she will be a candidate for Senator in Kentucky for the Democrats. Right now, Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell’s popularity in his home state is the lowest in the entire nation. Polls to show a match of McConnell and Judd, show turtle boy losing. I haz a happy over this.
• MSNBC hired two former White House staffers.  So much for objectivity.

 

 

Everything old is new again

I and many other people have been saying that the Republican Party is destroying itself from within and seems to need little help from their opponents in this matter. Every day I am becoming more convinced that we are seeing the GOP in it’s death throes (1) because the things they are doing are getting crazier and dumber.

Today we find out that Ted Nugent, the gun loving, draft dodging (2) and liberal hating singer, is going to be attending the State of the Union tonight as a guest of Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX).  Nugent most recently and famously had this to say about Pres. Obama and three of the most powerful and respected women in the world all while brandishing assault weapons:

Obama, he’s a piece of shit, and I told him to suck on my machine gun. Let’s hear it for him. And then I was in New York. I said, “Hey, Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch. Since I’m in California, how about Barbara Boxer, she might want to suck on my machine gun. And Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore. Any questions?

Yes, that’s the kind of man that the Republican Party wants to highlight on national television while the President has invited regular folks who REALLY represent America.  Part of me is delighted because it shows just how far off the Rails the GOP has gone and probably will alienate moderate voters.  The other part of me is pretty angry.  This guy has implied threats to the President’s life (to the point the Secret Service had to have a little talk with him), said some of the most inflammatory things about women and blacks I’ve heard spoken in public, and threatened to turn traitor.  Now yes, we have freedom of speech and no one is saying he can’t say such stupid and offensive things.  I’m just saying he doesn’t belong at the State of the Union because his views are so insulting, ugly and yes, violent.  You won’t see the left doing things like this.  You won’t see Bill Maher, who called Sarah Palin a cunt, attending the State of the Union.  You know why?  Because it’s totally inappropriate and does not help bridge the gap between the parties.  If anything, these kinds of people only make bipartisanship that much harder.  Dems know that and care who gets to represent them. The parties should show their best face forward at such events.  The American people and indeed the world, is watching.  Republicans must not give a shit about what anybody thinks.  They must want a racist, woman hating coward to represent them.  To channel Senator McCain, that’s a problem, my friends.

How about this one…..there is a right-wing radio host, Kevin Swanson, who had this to say:

[W]omen who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.

Did you know this idea is called a homunculus (3) and it dates back to Ancient Greece, in particular to Aristotle?  Did you know that Aristotle and most Greek men at that time hated women?  To them the highest form of love was between two men.  Women were only there for two things:  serving as slaves to their husbands and for breeding.  The idea was adopted by the Catholic Church and stood for a couple of thousand years (may still be part of their catechism).  But in the 19th Century modern science began to understand about sperm and eggs and development of the fetus, etc so that this homunculus theory has been proven wrong.  Pushing this kind of ignorant and debunked thought is now makes no sense unless they want people to start thinking this way again.  After all it won’t be too much of stretch for many Republicans, if their politicians are any indication.   Why?  Let me show you.

• A bill was recently introduced in New Mexico that would make any woman who aborted a baby conceived due to rape a criminal.  For what?  Tampering with evidence.  The bill was withdrawn, however the fact that they thought it was perfectly acceptable to bring it up for discussion is horrifying to me.
• So many politicians have said stupid and offensive things about rape in the last couple of years so that the GOP held a retreat and had to have an outside consultant talk to them and convince them that they needed to stop using the word “rape”.  Not change their thoughts about it, not reconsider their position or become more empathic to their constituents positions on it, but just stop saying the word.  Nothing about the wrong and right of it, just completely stop talking about the topic.  See, if a guy thinks that “some women rape easy” or that the vagina has defensive mechanisms to repel a rapists sperm or that there are forms of legitimate rape (4), then they can think it, the ethics of it be damned, all they want but they can’t alert their female constituents to their beliefs because it will cost them votes.  Hmmm, wonder why it would cost them votes…..? Because it’s completely wrong and  horribly offensive, maybe?!?!
• Besides an attempt to have a national amendment for Personhood, several state Republican legislators have been pushing Personhood laws and amendments as well.  In which things like abortion at any stage would be murder.  IVF (5) would be murder.  Miscarriage would be investigated because what causes a woman to miscarriage?  You don’t know until you investigate, right?  And the fetus would be a person, so did the mother do anything to cause it? Can you imagine just having had a miscarriage while you are grieving you could be investigated for murder for that very same thing?

Such willful ignorance as Swanson spewing is falling upon very fertile ground.  That ground is full of conservatives who think in similar ways, believe similar things, and who reject science if it doesn’t fit their narrative.  They home school their kids and teach their kids abstinence.  They believe what their preacher, their priest, their favorite  right-wing TV and/or radio host, and their Republican politicians tell them, even if it is just batshit crazy.

Yet another example of the nutso caucus was the decision to have not one but two Republicans give a response to the State of the Union.  See it’s tradition for one of the opposing party to speak after the President. The GOP decided they would have Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) speak in English and then Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) speak in Spanish.  This idea was quickly squashed by others in the Party not because it is breaking with the tradition of only one response. Not because it is a waste of time since all three of the Hispanics who really want to watch the speeches can find a million other ways to hear and read it translated.  It was squashed because Republicans didn’t want to give the impression that they supported any other language but English.  That’s right.  They turned down the opportunity to reach out to the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S., a group whose vote they resoundingly lost in 2012, because they didn’t want to legitimize that group’s language.  Keep going Republicans, you’re doing great!

Another….the President receives 30 threats against his life every day.  This is 400% increase.  He is so threatened that the Secret Service is being overwhelmed.

And so many others like…..

• the rapid growth in the gap between rich and poor and the corresponding shrinking of the middle class,
• the extreme opposition to reasonable requests for gun control reform,
• the rise of a propaganda arm of the conservative agenda that disguises itself as objective journalism (Fox News),
• the gamble with the debt ceiling and putting the global economy in jeopardy,
• the willingness to let the sequestration occur and slow down the U.S. economy’s growth just after a recession,
• the number of threats of impeachment the President has received,
• the entire “Birther Movement”,
• the purposeful misconstruing of the health care law,
• the surge in actual political power enjoyed by shock jockeys and TV grifters like Limbaugh and Beck,
• the resurgence of secession talk, etc, etc, etc.

I know that none of these things alone are all that unusual and they have all happened before (except for the Nugent thing, I guess, but we could consider the “You lie!” yell during the 2009 State of the Union to be in this class of offensive and tasteless behavior).  But put together, I am beginning to see a pattern of hate, rage even, that is coordinated, stoked and growing.  And it is helping the Republicans destroy themselves.  Which, in all honesty, is to the good in my eyes.  Unfortunately, it’s also hurting the rest of the country too.   If we don’t learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it and I can tell you, minorities and women do not want to and WILL NOT allow us to go backwards to the dark days when we only had second-class status.

Notes:  

1.  It will take several more election cycles, but I’m thinking around 2020

2.  Just in case you didn’t know, this man who is constantly brandishing guns and bragging about how he would revolt and fight against the evil Government, wasn’t so brave when he actually had a chance to serve his country, in order to avoid going to Vietnam Nugent by his own admission smeared shit all over his body and feigned insanity.  He got a deferment 4 times and was eventually given a 4-F.   But now, now he’s a big, big man and people should fear him.  Did he grow a pair over the last 20 years or is it that his kettle of bigotry and misogyny finally boiled over?

3.  various spellings, not sure which is official

4.  there are too many examples to link to here

5.  IVF, test tube babies, usually they fertilize many eggs, implant them in the womb and then once they attach, those that aren’t attached are removed and disposed of

What pride breeds

“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.”    –Emily Brontë

To all those gun loving 2nd Amendment Americans out there that think having a weapon with them or near them actually makes them safer, take a look at this.

The deadliest sniper in U.S. History (let that sink in), Chris Kyle, was shot to death at a firing range by a man who he was trying to help, a fellow veteran with PTSD. If Kyle couldn’t protect himself, what the heck makes the average American think they can? It’s pure deadly hubris to think this way.  Emily Brontë evidently couldn’t conceive of society and the weaponry available today, otherwise her quote would have been more like so:

Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselvesand the innocent around them.

This story is just anecdotal evidence of a very big problem that America is and will be facing in the coming decades–it’s a sad story that is being kept too low beneath the radar.  Did you know that suicides in the military have been on the rise since 2004? In 2012 the average was one soldier a day. Wrap your mind around that. Also rising are the number of murders committed by returning soldiers. Sadly the victims are usually their families or colleagues.

What do you think is going to happen when ALL our soldiers return from Afghanistan? Do you think those with PTSD will get better? They are already not receiving enough treatment from the VA and often have to rely on charity groups. Will there be enough private charity? Will be it be spread out across the country enough to meet the needs? Isn’t that the responsibility of the VA first, it being the best and most widespread network of hospitals? What about those with brain injuries that affect mood, impulse control, etc. Sometimes there’s an overlap–they not only have a brain injury, they also have PTSD. How many of these vets 20 or 30 years from now will break down, killing the innocent and kidnapping children as a cry for help because we didn’t meet their needs long ago?

This is NOT blaming the soldiers. They are victims too.  They risked everything and suffered for their country and they expected that we would do right by them when they came home. We owe them treatment and help. When someone is in crisis and it’s aftermath as so many soldiers are upon their return, the LAST thing we need to do is just dump them off into a society filled with deadly military grades weapons. In so doing we are practically asking for more tragedies like what is happening in Alabama. Get ready America, if you think it is bad now, it is only going to get worse if we don’t make some changes in gun control AND improve our mental health system AND focus on helping the tens of thousands of soldiers who gave up so much and live among us.